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Upset City: Six teams in Top 10 lose

Best Coast, “Who Have I Become?”
From the album Fade Away, released in 2013 by Bratty BC, LLC

Baylor, West Virginia, and Kansas suffer first losses at home

Starting with Baylor, they lost to Kansas State 56-54 after digging themselves a huge hole during the first half. The game ended with a blocked shot that would have faced overtime.

Oregon creamed Arizona to the tune of an 85-58 win, thanks to the Ducks nailing 10 three pointers in the first half en route to having a comfortable 38-18 halftime lead. Look out in the Pac-12, because that conference race may come to the final week.

One of the teams that barely escaped was Duke in Coach K’s return to the sidelines a little over a month after having successful back surgery. Grayson Allen played (finally) like the 2015 Most Outstanding Player at that year’s Final Four in Indianapolis scoring at will and mostly putting the team on his back escaping a possible upset bid from mediocre Pittsburgh by a close score of 72-64.

Oklahoma State is playing their way off the bubble, thanks in large part to having won five straight games after dropping their first six in Big 12 play. Their biggest win prior to Saturday’s 82-75 upset victory at West Virginia was at Wichita State. They will next host Baylor come Wednesday night, so we will see if fortunes begin to change with Kansas not suddenly as invincible as most observers thought going into the fall.

Deonte Burton came up huge scoring 29 points as Iowa State held off Kansas 92-89 in overtime at Allen Fieldhouse. The Cyclones scored a whopping 44 points in the second half to keep the game close. Frank Mason III of Kansas led all scorers with 32 points to go along with six rebounds.

The game of the day was in College Park, Maryland as Purdue rallied from a 12 point deficit to nip the Turtles 73-72. Matt Painter’s crew stopped the Terrapins from hitting a field goal in the last 7 1/2 minutes. 11 of Maryland’s final 14 points came from the free throw line by star player Melo Trimble.

Caleb Swanigan had another double-double (26 points and 10 rebounds), as the Boilermakers have won five of their last six games and are poised to return to the Top 25 and take over Northwestern’s brief run in the spotlight after the Wildcats were without their two star players sitting out because of injuries on Wednesday.

Wisconsin has taken over the Big Ten lead over Maryland and looks to pad it with one of only five games to be played on Super Sunday, 1 p.m. tip vs. Indiana at the Kohl Center which you can see on the network that brought us Super Bowl 50, CBS.

Small Note:

I have been busy doing many other things away from the computer since Friday morning. Please scroll down a bit and tap/click on one of my past blogs for a brief podcast concerning my next edition of “Under The Microscope”.

Sometime on Monday, I will give my analysis of Michigan State, Indiana, and Iowa State and give them my general chances of reaching the Big Dance.

Enjoy the Super Bowl everybody, and it will be interesting to see what the general seed list will be come next Saturday on CBS when they reveal the first ever pre-bracket show in their 36 year history covering the NCAA Tournament.